Kursk II
Summary As the sun sets, a helicopter carrying Pending, Stark Soldat, Cathedral, Ivan, Redneck Rider and Truck flies towards its destination, with news only that there was a large battle taking place within Kursk, and that anything sent ahead over the city was immediately shot down. As the helicopter gets closer to the city, it comes under attack from stealth fighters. The helicopter rear door opens to allow the passengers to fend the fighters off. Redneck and Ivan fail to get the fighters with their radar, but Cathedral and Pending manage to detect the fighters with their scans, as well as the missiles that had been launched at their transport. Stark preemptively jumps out of the helicopter, opting to look for the enemy with his eyeballs. Pending is able to use his crowd control weapons as a decoy and neutralizes one missile, but misses with this following railgun shot. The jet flies over, allowing the group to identify it as a Russian PAK FA. The other pilot's sensors continue to fail, with Stark attempting to use sonar to locate the jets and getting blasted with the sound of howling wind and engines instead. Redneck, sensing what's about to happen, gives the order to Cathedral to grab Pending and the helicopter pilot and prepare to gattai. Disoriented, Stark winds up crashing into the stealth fighter as it makes a pass, causing damage to the helicopter as well. Ivan and Redneck make the leap out of the helicopter. Truck, however, suffers from a thruster malfunction and is unable to leave the crashing helicopter of his own power. Stark decides to try and make up for his blunder by rescuing Truck. Pending is able to make it out of the helicopter as well, with its former pilot. The group clumps together in freefall as they work to control their decent, with Cael arriving in time to see them make their safe landing. While the team catches their breath, Cael demands an update while Truck inquires to what their plan of action actually is. Redneck gives Cael the short version of how they managed to immediately crash their helicopter, to which Cael asks if there has been contact with ground troops yet. Various BIS scans and observations indicate the their original destination is still to the northwest of the crashsite. Redneck struggles with his Hawkeye, breaking it for the remainder of the mission. After getting to the original landing zone, the group surveys the city. From their vantage point between Park Geroyev and Park Pionerov, they can see two large groups of aircraft circling and dropping bombs on what had been designated as holdout locations on the team’s maps. The city itself seems to have signal jammers set up throughout it, interfering with communications. Ivan attempts to use his comm buoys to over power the jamming, but the interference is so strong he’s only able to maintain the link between the team within 100 meters. Pending takes a moment to fix Truck’s fouled thrusters, doing such a fantastic job he actually makes Truck faster than before. Cael gives the order to to head to the holdout location in Park Pionerov to get in contact with troops there. The rest of the team discuss how to identify themselves as friendlies to whatever soldiers they encounter, suggesting waving AC or United Nations flags, or getting Ivan to play Russian folk music. Cael scopes out the park with his Hawkeye. The place seems to be bombed and burned out, and he sees soldiers and tanks entrenched in the park, with explosions from what seems to be artillery landing around them. Pending keeps up with the group, helicopter pilot in tow. Examining the city with his sensors, he sees large parts of Kursk are on fire. Napalm is being dropped from the bombers, and soldiers equipped with flamethrowers are clearing buildings. Pending reports this to Cael, who decides to investigate the thermal signatures near what is listed as an HQ building on the map. Ivan attempts to figure out the source of the artillery using his suit’s sensors and data from the rest of the team to track the shell’s trajectory, but there’s too much going on in the air to get a clear reading, only giving the vague estimation that the artillery is located somewhere west of the park. Pending, however, lends Ivan a hand, and together they are able to determine that the artillery is located on the other side of the city. Cael runs another scan, locating a group of Russian armored vehicles sitting in what remains of the park’s forest. Redneck pitches in with his thermals, and is able to get a slightly better read on them, identifying three types of armored vehicle, as well as accompanying infantry. Some of the vehicles seem to be anti-air or artillery judging by the size. Cael elects to take the tempered approach and meet the Russian soldiers in the forest with identification, ordering Ivan to hold is fire on the artillery across the city. Truck stealthily follows Cael as he approaches the Russians, followed by Pending, while Cathedral sticks with Ivan, and Redneck hangs back with Stark. Getting closer, Cael can make out four tanks (T-90s) and three IFVs (BMP-3s). The tanks turn their turrets towards Cael and Pending and open fire, combined with the artillery formerly shelling the park. The team starts shouting in Russian and other languages that they’re friendlies, but the crews either can’t hear them or don’t care. Stark charges in and eats tank shells, managing to weather the shots thanks to his shields, but the impacts throw off his aim with his flamethrowers. Redneck attempts to reign in the charging Stark Soldat with a two cable, but something goes wrong and the cable connects, discharging an EMP shock that stuns Stark’s suit for a time. Cathedral tries to dodge the incoming fire, but a lucky shell manages to strike him head on, and a piece of shrapnel hits the helicopter pilot riding on his shoulder in the face. Pending dives for cover behind some trees, but takes a hit from one of the tanks as well, causing a large amount of damage to his suit. Only Cael himself manages to duck into cover unscathed. Cathedral recovers the wounded helicopter pilot and retreats from the tank barrage, firing his railgun as he runs, trying to determine if she’s still alive or not. He falls back to Ivan’s location in the hopes that the fortress might have medical supplies to handle her wounds. Counting himself lucky, Pending opts to retaliate against the tanks, tossing an EMP grenade and firing his railgun at them. Cael charges in as well, aiming punches at the IFVs. Truck drops his camo and plants himself in front of the stunned Stark, trying to protect the immobile suit with his shield, and Redneck does the same. The shots from Cathedral’s railgun miss, but the grenade launcher that followed manages to disable one of the tanks with an EM pulse, causing its crew to immediately bail and flee the battle. Pending receives similar results from his attacks, missing with his railgun but knocking out another tank, though this time the crew opt to remain inside. Cael demolishes one IFV with his fists, crushing the crew inside. Redneck’s grappling hook fires again and somehow takes out another tank, causing something inside it to catch fire and killing everyone inside. With the odds definitely not in their favor, the last remaining tank and IFV make to retreat, firing one last salvo that fails to hit any of the pilots. Cathedral makes it back to Ivan and carries the helicopter pilot, Ellie, into the cargo hold, then unsuits and works as best he can to try and stabilize her. After verifying that no major arteries or blood vessels have been breached, he pulls the chunk of shrapnel from her eye socket, then applies bandages and painkillers. It seems she’ll pull through, less an eye. The pilots outside aren’t interested in letting the retreating vehicles escape. Redneck’s claw thing hits another tank, taking it out in the same way it did the other, while his autocannon manages to damage the tracks of the remaining IFV. Rockets fired by Truck finish the tank off for good and knock out the tracks of the crippled IFV. Pending attempts to help with another EMP grenade, but botches his throw and fries Cael instead A mortified Pending grabs the fallen Cael and starts dragging them back towards Ivan, who expresses some frustration at having to kill fellow Russian soldiers. Cathedral suits back up and exits the Katyusha to get back to the mission. Truck, overhearing Ivan’s frustrations, opts to camo back up and return to scouting in case the Russians make a counterattack. Ivan then makes up his mind to take Cael, Ellie and the contents of the IFV with him to evacuate the area on the grounds that Cael and Ellie require medical extraction, and that the situation might potentially be a case of friendly-fire. Some hours pass. As the sun sets, Carrier Prime arrives to join the party. CP begins salvaging one of the one of the tanks while Redneck fills Tommy and Editi in on what’s happened so far. The attempt goes wrong as one of the scavengers’ welding torches causes the tank’s ammunition to cook off, causing a large explosion that can be seen from long away and destroying the drone beyond repair. Ivan then returns, having dropped off Ellie and having had the opportunity to interrogate the prisoners from the IFV. He tells the group that the city is being fought over by two factions, remnants of the Federal government, and local forces the soldiers claimed were rebels attempting to “restore the Soviet Union”. The rebels appeared be have the support of a local GI presence, leading Ivan to conclude that GI was conducting operations outside of ACC’s knowledge. He also notes that Bunyip, the person who sent them on the mission, was apparently a GI member. The Federal remnants are being lead by a suit-user, who is using their suit to enforce a communications blackout. Ivan then conveys that they have been directed by ACC to break the siege on the city, restore stability to the area, and to recover the missing Bunyip. He determines from what he knows that ACC’s intention must be to defend the locals from the attack. Assuming that the Federalists are not acting on the authority of the Federal heads of state and are the aggressors in the situation, his recommended course of action is to support the rebels. Truck asks if there’s any way to distinguish the rebels from the Federalists, to which Ivan guesses that based off the former’s nostalgic motives, they would probably wear soviet-themed insignia for identification. Redneck expresses some concerns that helping the rebels might result in some unforeseen consequences later on down the road, but decides to go with it, as does the rest of the team. Reviewing the map, the team picks out four locations held by the Rebels. The Federation's artillery was tracked to a location on the far side of the Stadium, which is doubling as the Rebel HQ in Kursk. The armoured company engaged earlier have fallen back west through the forest towards the Stadium, and Federation air forces in the area remain busy bombing the holdouts to the north. Ivan deploys Cael, who reboots himself and tries to get a grasp of the situation. Tommy directs his remaining scavenger drones to repair the crippled IFV, and with some trouble manages to get it running again. Redneck asks Tim and Pending if they can try and get to the Federalists’ comms through the IFV and to let Cael know as soon as they do. Cael orders the team to head for the closest rebel base, taking the IFV with them as an offering. Pending hops in the IFV with the scavenger drone, with Redneck and Cael running escort. Ivan follows up at the rear of the formation. Cathedral moves of to the right, and, looking north-east, can see the park where the rebels were holding out from before, noting that they seem to be being left alone for now. Cael issues new orders to head for Park Geroyev to get Ivan into position to counterbattery the Federalist artillery, or the armor divisions should the opportunity come up. The team moves out of the forest and through the city towards the park, coming to a stop at a large building just south of the landmark. Within the park grounds, the team can pick up the sounds of fighting and shouting, as well as the sounds of the Federalist aircraft returning for another round of bombing. Stark Soldat attempts to scan the area with sonar, but there’s so much noise coming from out of the park battleground that it's impossible to make out much, only that the main source of the noise outside the part itself is coming from somewhere west of it, and that the planes are definitely getting closer to the park. Ivan sends a drone into the park to try and see if there’s any way to identify who’s who before they start shooting, but the comm jamming prevents it from sending anything back. Carrier Prime does the same and similarly loses its drone. Cathedral attempts to scan the area with thermals, but can’t find anything of use other than that there’s something particularly hot to the west of the park. Cael does a sensor sweep as well, managing to spot 5 tanks in the park that are clearly identified as belonging to the rebels due to their unusual markings. Cael also seas flashes of heat coming from the windows and rooftops of the buildings to the west of the park, as well as enemy vehicles engaging the rebel tanks. Noting that the ECM seems to be growing stronger with the noise from the planes, leading to the assumption that the Federalists have an EW plane somewhere above. Cael orders the team to get into cover and focus on anti-aircraft duties, before ordering Stark to accompany him on the charge. He activates his camouflage and triggers his jump jets to set him towards the rebel tanks. Pending tries to support the ensuing assault with additional targeting data, but the ECM intensifies to the point of shorting out his HUD. CP continues to struggle with the communications equipment, managing to intercept a few garbles transmissions. Light drones launched earlier to intercept any bombs dropped by the above aircraft attempt to do so, but fail to intercept the munitions, instead catching the attention of a man with a really large bolt-action rifle, who fires at and destroys one of the two drones. Cathedral successfully intercepts and neutralizes another bomb with his railrifle and destroys a building to the north of the park with a poorly-aimed grenade launcher shot. Ivan fires a volley of rockets into the sky towards the bombers and is rewarded with two large explosions. Redneck adds to Ivan’s fire with his railrifle, causing a large aircraft with a radar dish on the back to fall out of the sky and crash into the city. Ivan and Tommy’s scout drones make their way back to their owners, reporting that there is a force of what appear to be Russian soldiers in uniform camouflage and a force of individuals in mixed camouflage engaging in a close-range firefight with one another, with at least one T-90 in rebel markings. The person from before with the huge rifle appears to be leading the Federal forces, and is most likely a foreigner judging by the quality of his Russian. Truck sneaks through the battlefield to the west side of the park and unloads rockets and grenades into the troops and tanks in front of the buildings to the west, killing many of them with his sudden attack. Ivan annihilates the buildings to the west of the park themselves, along with everyone inside, with another volley of rockets. His one guided missile, however, somehow locks on to Cael. Luckily, Stark Soldat sees the missile home in on Cael and jumps in front of him, swallowing it. Carrier Prime’s drones continue to try and run interference for the bombers, having much more success this time, while Tommy himself works to try and fix Pending’s dead HUD. Redneck, from his position by the captured IFV still, attempts to help the drones with his railrifle again, but misses and nearly shoots one of Tommy’s drones out of the sky instead. The remaining bombs land, blanketing the park and the rebels within in napalm. Stark, whom had jumped into the park to eat Ivan’s missile, manages to inadvertently shield Cael, the rebel command tank, the guy with the huge rifle, and a squad or two of rebels. Carrier Prime sends more drones into the fire to rescue who they can, first managing to recover a Russian soldier and a rebel, and then a BMP with a full squad that had tried to take cover from the napalm inside. Cathedral himself runs into the fire and is able to save four more soldiers cowering in a shallow foxhole What forces in the western buildings that survived Ivan and Truck’s volleys attempt to retreat, but Truck fires another volley of rockets at them as they flee, cutting down the survivors with explosions and shrapnel. Ivan has trouble locking on to the artillery on the other side of the city, until Pending is able to use his grappling hooks to quickly get on top of one of the taller buildings and use his suit’s Crossfire ability to get a good targeting solution for him. Ivan fires a volley with the new data, and the bombardment against the rebel HQ in the stadium stops. Cael meets up with the guy with the huge rifle, who identifies himself as a member of Green Initiative. He mentions that he was expecting the group to arrive at the call of a “coward pilot”. The GI pilot informs them that the Federal forces are using a combination of EW planes and EM anti-air tanks to jam communications. He requests that the team help him take out the remainder of the jamming vehicles so the GI-rebels can regroup. Caels inquires about Bunyip, to which the GI says that he was last seen at the memorial to the north, with a group of other Australians. Carrier Prime takes in those rescued from the napalm strike and attempts to render medical aid, determining that of those from the IFV that Carrier Prime’s drones recovered, three of them won’t survive their wounds. While Cael converses with the GI, Stark takes another sonar sweep around and gets an earful of the sounds of the burning and dying, which he vocalizes that he finds exciting. Cathedral makes another trip through the park, trying to rescue whoever her can. He manages to pull out one last survivor, a young Russian soldier. With no chance of rescuing anyone else, Cathedral pulls the boy back to the IFV, which Pending drives to the fore of the southern building it had been parked behind. Cael orders that the team ditch the IFV for the rebels to use and tend to the wounded while the rest of the team focus on getting to the HQ and clearing the skies. A sudden transmission over radio tells them that most of the Federal forces seem to be falling back. With the battle winding down, the team makes their way towards the memorial. A quick sweep of the area shows that the place has already been bombed out, with napalm judging by how much fire there is. Pending pings the area with his radar, finding mostly destroyed vehicles, until he reads one signal that seems much larger than the others. Simultaneously, Cael checks his sensors, getting a reading from his sonar that alerts him to what sounds a lot like a railrifle charging to fire. The railgun shot hits Carrier Prime directly, but CP’s armor is so thick it only leaves a slight dent in the ball’s hull. Redneck Rider is clipped by the shockwave of the projectile, taking light damage. The firer appears to be some kind of very large tank with a triple-barrelled rotary railgun set into the turret. Pending immediately shoots back with his own railrifle, landing a glancing hit on its armor. Catherdral adds to pending’s rail shot with another, followed up by an EMP grenade. The tank halts from the affects of the grenade, though the turret still seems to be active. Truck fires a series of rockets at the tank, leaving large dents in its hull but still not managing to breach through. Carrier Prime fires particle beams at the tank, but even these fail to penetrate its armor, and what hacking attempts it makes only manage to seize its communications systems. Cael shoots ahead and smashes his fists into the tank, knocking through the top hatch. A Russian man inside pulls a revolver from his belt and fires back at Cael. The bullets simply bounce off his suit’s armor, however. After taking a huge amount of punishment, the tank fires a fully charged repulsor field directed at Stark Soldat flying above, followed up by firing its main triple-railgun cannon. Truck blocks the repulsor blast with a point barrier, while Cathedral is able to grab Pending is pull him out of the way of the blast. Ivan manages to avoid the wave as well. Stark Soldat, meanwhile, is able to dodge the wave, but gets hit with the railgun. However, his armor absorbs the worst of it, and he only takes light damage from the attack. With the hatch busted wide open below him, Cael punches the tank commander to death, followed by the gunner. The driver raises his hands in surrender until Carrier Prime plays awful noises through the hacked communications, prompting the driver to opt to shoot himself instead. With the tank now captured, Pending scopes the area with his radar again, but there don’t appear to be any more enemies around. Australians start to exit the building the tank had smashed through to get to the AC suits Cael hauls the dead tank driver from his seat and claims the tank for himself, while Tommy and Truck approach the Australian fighters to ask about Bunyip. At the call of the Australians, Bunyip reveals himself to have been hiding behind the large tank’s turret. Ivan asks where Bunyip had been this whole time. Bunyip explains that with today being the anniversary of the Battle of Kursk, he and several other GI members decided to visit the memorial there, where they saw the rebels and the soldiers fighting. Ivan comments that Hanse will probably be annoyed with Bunyip throwing his lot in with the rebels, to which Bunyip replies that he doesn’t care and that Hanse doesn’t care about the people of Kursk, only the city’s resources, then admits that he’s not looking forward to explaining his actions to ACC command. Category:PACYOA: TE Category:Mission Record Category:Western Russia